The World in Time / Lapham’s Quarterlyhttp://laphamsquarterly.org
Fri, 02 Feb 2018 21:27:36 +0000Fri, 02 Feb 2018 21:27:36 +000060enAll rights reservedfeeds@soundcloud.com (SoundCloud Feeds)Lewis H. Lapham, the founder and editor of Lapham’s Quarterly, interviews authors of new books of history. New episodes are released biweekly. laphamsquarterly.org.Lewis H. Lapham, the founder and editor of Lapham…The World in Timelqworldintimepodcast@gmail.comLapham’s Quarterlynohttp://i1.sndcdn.com/avatars-000305531290-4oxfpk-original.jpgThe World in Timehttp://laphamsquarterly.org
tag:soundcloud,2010:tracks/390864756Episode 23: Victor SebestyenFri, 02 Feb 2018 15:27:31 +0000https://soundcloud.com/laphamsquarterlyworldintime/victor-sebestyen
00:47:35Lapham’s Quarterlyno“Two and a half decades after the collapse of the USSR, it seems the strangest of anachronisms that Vladimir Illyich Lenin can continue to draw such crowds,” Victor Sebestyen writes of Lenin’s tomb. “Everyone knows the havoc he wreaked; few people now believe in the faith he espoused. Yet he still commands attention—even affection—in Russia.” That attention also made the historian’s exhaustive new look at the man overshadowing recent Russian history possible. For this episode of The World in Time, he discussed his biography of Lenin and the conclusions he reached about its protagonist: “Even when he was wrong about things, he was often wrong in an interesting and challenging way. But I actually grew to hate him much, much more as I was working on it.”
Lewis H. Lapham talks with Victor Sebestyen, author of Lenin: The Man, the Dictator, and the Master of Terror.
Thanks to our generous donors. Lead support for this podcast has been provided by Elizabeth “Lisette” Prince. Additional support was provided by James J. “Jimmy” Coleman Jr.“Two and a half decades after the collapse of the…“Two and a half decades after the collapse of the USSR, it seems the strangest of anachronisms that Vladimir Illyich Lenin can continue to draw such crowds,” Victor Sebestyen writes of Lenin’s tomb. “Everyone knows the havoc he wreaked; few people now believe in the faith he espoused. Yet he still commands attention—even affection—in Russia.” That attention also made the historian’s exhaustive new look at the man overshadowing recent Russian history possible. For this episode of The World in Time, he discussed his biography of Lenin and the conclusions he reached about its protagonist: “Even when he was wrong about things, he was often wrong in an interesting and challenging way. But I actually grew to hate him much, much more as I was working on it.”
Lewis H. Lapham talks with Victor Sebestyen, author of Lenin: The Man, the Dictator, and the Master of Terror.
Thanks to our generous donors. Lead support for this podcast has been provided by Elizabeth “Lisette” Prince. Additional support was provided by James J. “Jimmy” Coleman Jr.tag:soundcloud,2010:tracks/384495509Episode 22: Holger HoockFri, 19 Jan 2018 14:33:22 +0000https://soundcloud.com/laphamsquarterlyworldintime/episode-22-holger-hoock
00:43:44Lapham’s Quarterlyno“For over two centuries, this topic has been subject to whitewashing and selective remembering and forgetting,” historian Holger Hoock writes. He is referring to the American Revolution, a war sanitized by sentimentality and historical distance but about as bloody as other moments in the past with a “Revolution” appended to its name. The facts Hoock cites are relentless: “More than ten times as many Americans died, per capita, in the Revolutionary War as in World War I, and nearly five times as many as in World War II. The death rate among Revolutionary-era prisoners of war was the highest in American history. In addition, at least 20,000 British and thousands more American Loyalist, Native American, German, and French lives were lost. The Revolution exacted further human sacrifice when at war’s end approximately one in forty Americans went into permanent exile, the equivalent of some 7.5 million today.” In May 2017, Hoock spoke with Lewis Lapham about his research on the Revolutionary War at an event at the New York Public Library. Listen to their conversation above.
Lewis H. Lapham talks with Holger Hoock, author of Scars of Independence: America’s Violent Birth.
Thanks to our generous donors. Lead support for this podcast has been provided by Elizabeth “Lisette” Prince. Additional support was provided by James J. “Jimmy” Coleman Jr.“For over two centuries, this topic has been subj…“For over two centuries, this topic has been subject to whitewashing and selective remembering and forgetting,” historian Holger Hoock writes. He is referring to the American Revolution, a war sanitized by sentimentality and historical distance but about as bloody as other moments in the past with a “Revolution” appended to its name. The facts Hoock cites are relentless: “More than ten times as many Americans died, per capita, in the Revolutionary War as in World War I, and nearly five times as many as in World War II. The death rate among Revolutionary-era prisoners of war was the highest in American history. In addition, at least 20,000 British and thousands more American Loyalist, Native American, German, and French lives were lost. The Revolution exacted further human sacrifice when at war’s end approximately one in forty Americans went into permanent exile, the equivalent of some 7.5 million today.” In May 2017, Hoock spoke with Lewis Lapham about his research on the Revolutionary War at an event at the New York Public Library. Listen to their conversation above.
Lewis H. Lapham talks with Holger Hoock, author of Scars of Independence: America’s Violent Birth.
Thanks to our generous donors. Lead support for this podcast has been provided by Elizabeth “Lisette” Prince. Additional support was provided by James J. “Jimmy” Coleman Jr.tag:soundcloud,2010:tracks/377792366Episode 21: Eric FonerFri, 05 Jan 2018 15:32:03 +0000https://soundcloud.com/laphamsquarterlyworldintime/episode-21-eric-foner
00:37:37Lapham’s Quarterlyno“History does not tell us what to do,” Civil War scholar Eric Foner says, but it does help us understand how the world got this way, as long as you aren’t stuck playing the Great Men greatest hits in your studies. But that’s what most of us learn: a litany of good or important deeds done by familiar names that turns history into a constellation of memorized details instead of a reckoning. This pockmarked understanding of the past, and the efforts to render history into more than a sunny yet useless bit of impressionism, is the theme of Foner’s Battles for Freedom: The Use and Abuse of American History. The essays within were published in The Nation between 1977 and 2017 and often hit home the stickiness of the past. In a book review about public history and Confederate monuments, he asks, “Why, one wonders, has our understanding of history changed so rapidly, but its public presentation remained so static?”
Lewis H. Lapham talks with Eric Foner, author of Battles for Freedom: The Use and Abuse of American History.
Thanks to our generous donors. Lead support for this podcast has been provided by Elizabeth “Lisette” Prince. Additional support was provided by James J. “Jimmy” Coleman Jr.“History does not tell us what to do,” Civil War …“History does not tell us what to do,” Civil War scholar Eric Foner says, but it does help us understand how the world got this way, as long as you aren’t stuck playing the Great Men greatest hits in your studies. But that’s what most of us learn: a litany of good or important deeds done by familiar names that turns history into a constellation of memorized details instead of a reckoning. This pockmarked understanding of the past, and the efforts to render history into more than a sunny yet useless bit of impressionism, is the theme of Foner’s Battles for Freedom: The Use and Abuse of American History. The essays within were published in The Nation between 1977 and 2017 and often hit home the stickiness of the past. In a book review about public history and Confederate monuments, he asks, “Why, one wonders, has our understanding of history changed so rapidly, but its public presentation remained so static?”
Lewis H. Lapham talks with Eric Foner, author of Battles for Freedom: The Use and Abuse of American History.
Thanks to our generous donors. Lead support for this podcast has been provided by Elizabeth “Lisette” Prince. Additional support was provided by James J. “Jimmy” Coleman Jr.tag:soundcloud,2010:tracks/369988961Episode 20: Maya JasanoffFri, 22 Dec 2017 14:48:46 +0000https://soundcloud.com/laphamsquarterlyworldintime/episode-20-maya-jasanoff
00:33:23Lapham’s Quarterlyno“The book teaches me things,” Barack Obama explained to his friends when defending his decision to read Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, “about white people…the book’s not really about Africa. Or black people. It’s about the man who wrote it. The European. The American. A particular way of looking at the world.” In her introduction to The Dawn Watch, Maya Jasanoff writes that she came to agree with what the future president wrote in Dreams from My Father, that Conrad’s perspective was valuable “not just despite its blind spots but because of them. Conrad captured something about the way power operated across continents and races, something that seemed as important to engage with today as it had when he started to write.” In this podcast episode, the Harvard history professor traces the writer’s past and explains how she followed him across the sea and to the Congo to understand better what he saw and how the imperialism he observed in the nineteenth century evolved into what we see now in the twenty-first century.
Lewis H. Lapham talks with Maya Jasanoff, author of The Dawn Watch: Joseph Conrad in a Global World.“The book teaches me things,” Barack Obama explai…“The book teaches me things,” Barack Obama explained to his friends when defending his decision to read Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, “about white people…the book’s not really about Africa. Or black people. It’s about the man who wrote it. The European. The American. A particular way of looking at the world.” In her introduction to The Dawn Watch, Maya Jasanoff writes that she came to agree with what the future president wrote in Dreams from My Father, that Conrad’s perspective was valuable “not just despite its blind spots but because of them. Conrad captured something about the way power operated across continents and races, something that seemed as important to engage with today as it had when he started to write.” In this podcast episode, the Harvard history professor traces the writer’s past and explains how she followed him across the sea and to the Congo to understand better what he saw and how the imperialism he observed in the nineteenth century evolved into what we see now in the twenty-first century.
Lewis H. Lapham talks with Maya Jasanoff, author of The Dawn Watch: Joseph Conrad in a Global World.